Ludo King: the group chat got a board game.

Send somebody’s counter back to the start and you have given the conversation a subject. It might not be a subject on which you agree, but there is usually plenty to say.

Ludo King was well suited to that kind of company during India’s 2020 lockdown. Friends and relatives could take turns on a familiar board while staying in separate homes. You didn’t need to have had an interesting day before you joined. Someone else’s lucky roll could give you enough to discuss.

And if you lost, arranging to meet again could be as simple as insisting on a rematch.

The game was already on the phone

Mumbai-based Gametion launched Ludo King in February 2016. It had been around for four years when lockdown gave online group games a much larger place in the day. The Indian Express’s May 2020 account (opens in a new tab) described the surge in familiar games adapted for screens, including ludo and tambola.

The board didn’t take much introducing if you had played ludo before. You could recognise the coloured counters and understand why somebody was annoyed without studying an elaborate set of instructions. Getting the group onto an app was one task; teaching everyone an unfamiliar game would have been another.

That mattered when the reason for playing was partly to spend time together. A call can put a little pressure on everybody to have news. Taking turns lets you be in one another’s company without constantly finding a new topic.

Silence is less awkward when someone is deciding which counter to move. You can just wait, and perhaps develop an opinion about their decision.

Please leave your opponent able to play again

An April 2020 Indian Express guide (opens in a new tab) described families and partners playing. Among its tips was an unusually considerate recommendation: keep the in-game coin stakes low, so that winning didn’t leave another person unable to afford the next round.

It is worth pausing over the kind of victory that would require this warning. You have beaten your friend, depleted their pretend money and made it harder for them to stay. Perhaps a slightly smaller win would have been enough.

The advice understood the occasion. There was a game to win, but there were also people you wanted to keep around. Low stakes made another round possible, which could be more useful than a large balance of in-game coins.

The familiar grievances were part of the attraction too. Luck can look deeply suspicious when it belongs to somebody else. Being able to complain about something as ordinary as a die was a modest pleasure in a period with much more serious things to worry about.

An evening with something to do

An online board couldn’t make lockdown easy. For people able to join, it could give part of an evening a familiar shape. You took turns, watched the other counters and had a reason to remain on the phone even after the news from home had run out.

Ludo King still offers online and offline play (opens in a new tab). Its lockdown chapter belongs to a particular time; the usefulness of an easy game between friends doesn’t depend on recreating that time.

You may have forgotten who won most of those rounds. If you remember somebody sending your counter back just before it reached safety, though, that result may still need discussing.